Let's study ID (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 28, 2021, 10:25 (1212 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Do you deny a first cause that for you includes mindless material somehow resulting in the human mind?

dhw: That is one of the alternatives that I find unsatisfactory, the other being the theory that conscious beings like ourselves must have a source, and therefore the source must be a conscious being without a source.

DAVID: Do you believe in any first cause and do you accept a first cause must exist?

For the thousandth time, I accept that a first cause must exist, and I have suggested two first causes but believe in neither of them, which is why I am an agnostic.

DAVID: That is my reasoned conclusion from reading science books!!!

dhw: I’m surprised that there are science books which make the above claims plus the rest of your anthropocentric theory of God's roundabout method of achieving his sole purpose. Or do you mean that you have read lots of science books and have come up with this theory all by yourself?

DAVID: All by myself.

And judging by the illogicality of your theory of evolution, I strongly suspect that you will remain all by yourself.

Taken from: Specific organs protection
dhw: So now you have your God popping in every few thousand years to change legs to flippers, and reorganize breathing, sex, birth and defence mechanisms – all BEFORE the poor creatures had any problem with their breathing, sex, birth and enemies. And each pop was part of his goal to design humans who weren’t even there! May I suggest that when whales entered the water, all these changes came about in stages to improve the animals’ chances of survival and NOT as advance operations even before there were any problems?

DAVID: I can't imagine a pre-whale landlubber floundering around in the water happily thinking to himself, "I'm going to be a whale". My God made each stage all at once at the start of each stage, fully prepared for a new style of life.

I imagine the pre-whale thinking to himself: “If I stay on land, I’m gonna starve to death. There’s food in the water, and I’m gonna get it.” Although not the best of swimmers, he could swim well enough to survive, and as time went by, the cell communities – as they so often do – restructured the legs of the increasingly maritime animal in order to adapt them to the new way of life. Ditto every other recorded stage in the evolution of the whale. I don’t know what you mean by “all at once at the start of each stage”. How can stages mean all at once? And how can each stage make the animal “fully” prepared if there are more stages to come?

TOMATOES
DAVID: You are still blind to the Darwinism magic solutions. In my view those tomatoes arrived with defense mechanisms.

dhw: What magic solutions? Did Darwin even know about these tomatoes? Do tell us the point of defense mechanisms if it is not to defend organisms against threats to their SURVIVAL? And tell us why your God found it necessary to design the insects to attack the tomatoes and to defend the tomatoes against them, when all he wanted to do was design humans and their lunch. Couldn’t he have found a better way to feed the insects than to threaten our salad through a shortage of tomatoes? May I suggest that only when organisms’ survival is threatened to do they design counter-measures?

DAVID: How do the tomato plants learn to produce noxious chemicals? My point is still the Darwinist magical solutions as in the article, and please note I said nothing about Darwin, himself, who didn't know what he didn't know. My dislike is for his acolytes.

I can’t answer your question, and I don’t suppose anyone else can. Please tell me what is the “Darwinist” magical answer, and why is it more magical than an unknown, sourceless intelligent mind popping in to give tomatoes courses in noxious chemical production? Meanwhile, why do you ignore all the questions I have asked above?